Narcotic Induced Stream of Consciousness

(Warning... this post has been brought to you post-surgery stream of consciousness induced by Vicodin.)


Things have been a bit crazy around here lately. Much of this was centered around my having surgery yesterday. I had to prepare at work to be gone for the week. I had to prepare myself to be housebound for a week. I had to prepare myself mentally for going under the knife. And we had to keep everything going along in the right direction at the same time for two little kids.

On the keeping everything moving along in the right direction front... Leif "officially" started kindergarten on Monday. I say officially because if you ask him he has been a kindergartener since June. And he is staying in the same private school, in the same classroom and so not much is changing. The first day of kindergarten is often viewed as a big huge deal, but for Leif and us, not much changed.

Then there is Skadi. The latest for her is that I took her in for her first eye exam last week, just to rule out any problems since Leif has eye problems. I knew she sees well and doesn't have any trouble doing any fine work at school, so I wasn't expecting any problems. She was a trooper and even offered to do all the eye tests willingly to keep up with her brother. They were quite impressed with her. Anyways, I was wrong. We have another appointment coming up in mid-September to have her eyes dilated and determine the extent of her eye problems. We know right now that her left eye is poor with distance vision and her eye doctor has indicated that she suspects similar problems as Leif has. Sigh.


Then there is the fun stuff. We hit the fair on Saturday with our good friends. When I was a kid growing up in Wyoming the fair was a huge event, one that we attended nearly everyday of the week that it was in town along with the rodeo. I like being the adult now. I take my kids to the fair on ONE day, we look at the animals, ride the rides and then we go home. No rodeo. I am just not a rodeo type person... I got my fill the first 13 years of my life I suppose.


All that brings us up to Sunday. Sunday I hurried and prepared myself for the week of sitting around the house, or lying around the house as the case may be. I went to the fabric store and bought more fabric for my quilt and got it washing. I stocked up on groceries for the week. I prepared myself mentally. Or so I thought. But it didn't help that I dreamt about my mom the night before, Skadi was up and my nerves would not calm.


I told myself over and over that people get their gall bladders removed all the time. My surgeon, who I had been told by others was very gentle, meticulous and does the most gall bladder removals in our area as he is a gastric surgeon, he had fully prepared me. Still when 5:30am arrived and I was sitting in the pre-op waiting room I couldn't stop the nerves.


I only have had surgery once before in my life, when I was 5. I had a hernia repair done and the details are vague, but what should have been a short routine surgery ended up in an extended stay in the hospital after I hemmorhaged afterwards. It's true, redheads have more complications in surgery. My grandmother used to tell me this during her nursing days. I used to kind of think she was just full of it. But I have since heard this from most of my doctors, including my obstetrician, my surgeon and the anesthesiologist yesterday.


Seeing what a mess I was, the anesthesiologist (who was super sweet) ordered a sedative for me before taking me into the OR. Thank you anesthesiologist. I only vaguely remember her asking me what color hair I had as I was fading in and out and confirmed with her that yes, my hair is red and that it was natural. Later I found out that she was concerned about this and upped my anestesia as she was worried about me staying under.


Next thing I knew I was waking up paranoid. I thought they were putting me out? What was I doing waking up? I got a glimpse of the clock and finally realized an hour had passed and they were actually done. Time in recovery, time in CDU (clinical decision unit - where they decide if I get to go home or stay), and then I was sent home at noon.


That first afternoon went fine and I slept a lot. Then night hit.


I have a fabulous husband. Really, really I do.


He set the alarm for every three hours to get me up and give me my pain killer as things were not going good. Then to top it off my daughter, who decides not to sleep through the night about as often as she does, woke up too. Poor AB, very little sleep last night thanks to the girls in his family.


Today has gone better. AB got the kids to school and brought me a pumpkin spice latte home which I have nursed most of the day.


He finished finally, installing the chandelier in the dining room. What a pain. A serious pain. And at one point he was asking me if I really disliked the old one that much, wouldn't it be easier to just send the new one back?


See this decorative plaster thingy? Yeah, it sucks. Royally sucks. No, don't get me wrong. It is pretty and I do like it, but it seriously complicated our installation of the chandelier. It adds a full inch to the installation distance. A full inch that our new chandelier didn't have.



I don't know what he did today, because I was on the couch watching Pawn Stars crocheting. (Yes, my new obsession thanks to Rick - the TV show Pawn Stars, not crocheting. I have successfully pawned off this addiction on AB and my sister in law as well.) We had worked on the chandelier over the weekend and left it hanging half done saying, "I don't know what we do next!"


I don't know what he did, but look... it is hung! And it works! And today is August 31st, so we succeeded in our August goal! (Ok, so my quilt goal was just way way off... we will just ignore that aspect of the August goal...)




So today I watched Mamma Mia (never saw it before but I recorded it knowing it was one of my mom's all time favorites). And because I have a horrible time just sitting and watching TV, I crocheted some:


I ironed my fabric for the quilt so I can finish cutting out 7" squares.


I watched Pawn Stars and Cash Cab.


I wasn't going to check my work e-mail.


No comment there. (But I am totally freaking out that two proposal calls I have to respond to were released today.)


I have taken my narcotic every 3 hours.


I have whined.


I checked Facebook.


I talked on the phone to my dads.


I am looking forward to being crafty tomorrow and maybe sitting at the table and sewing blocks together if I am able.


I am really, really looking forward to a shower.


I am bummed AB plans to work tomorrow, I have enjoyed having him home.



I am looking forward to feeling better and hope that tonight is a vast improvement over last night.

March Goals Update

This month is good for me mentally... pretty much. Ok, the trip to Home Depot yesterday wasn't exactly good for me mentally... more on that later.

I have always loved crafting - of certain types. I enjoy creating a lot, though as a working mom, I don't often get the opportunity to do this. I needed a month for me, a month not centered around improving our home.

My Orange Tree cross stitch is started and I have been working on that a few evenings a week. I enjoy cross stitching a lot, though not a huge fan of the single stitches. I like to put a color on and move across the fabric. Not do one stitch. Last night I had two colors on the entire page (one page of twelve), I found a single stitch of each color. Not a huge fan of that. But oh well, I can deal and with these huge works of art, this IS to be expected.

Yesterday we went to Home Depot to the kitchen design center where we sat in front of a woman and her book of pull outs.

No, we don't know the brand of our cabinets.

Don't tell me that I have to know this for pull outs, I have found plenty of sites that sell non-custom pull outs.

No, we aren't going to replace the CABINET we want a pull out in.

No, we aren't going redesign our kitchen based on a single pull out. (?!?!)

I went about 10 steps back yesterday from everything I had looked up on the internet with regard to pull outs. Finally she pulled out a catalog from the exact website I had scoured recently, "oh yes, I guess this one company DOES make generic pull outs to install yourself". When I saw that all they are going to do is order it from the same website and put in a Home Depot adder, we left.

I will get the pull out ordered here soon.

Today I tackled the pillowcase dresses.

I estimated I could make one in under 2 hours the other day.

Wrong.

I can make three, including coming up with my own pattern and making loads of mistakes on the first one in under 2 hours. 1:45 to be exact. And I showed you the prices of the ones I found online right? $89 and $98 respectively.

Well I paid $8.99 for the pink flowers pillowcase from Pottery Barn Kids (it IS actually hard to find the *right* pillowcases for this. The pattern has to be oriented correctly and I don't need sheets with it.) Then I bought the white pillowcases for practices on clearance from PBKids for $1.99 each.

Ribbon spools of 5 yards for $1.99 each color from JoAnn's. Shiny, sparkly thread was the big expense at $5.99.

Proof:

They are a touch big on her. (Glad I didn't try to do this last year.) But that means she can have them for a few years! They are quite adjustable too.

Ignore, unless you cross stitch.

Ever since posting about cross stitching the bug has set in. I pulled out my Orange Tree pattern and swooned once again. I looked at all 19 pages of the pattern. I silently appreciated how there were 6 pages of thread information. Three pages with codes and stitch information and a separate three pages listing off numbers that I would need. Yes, these are 8.5 x 11 inch pages. Full pages.

Then just by coincidence when we cleaned the garage this past weekend (yes, you read right, we CLEANED the garage this weekend!), I ran across a big Rubbermaid tub that said “Cross Stitch” on it. AB hurried it upstairs and put it up high in the walk in closet in the guest room on the top shelf.

Then on Sunday I hurried upstairs while AB was at a birthday party with Skadi and pulled it down off that high shelf and lugged the thing downstairs again.

When I opened it I fell even deeper head over heels.

This particular box is box two of two. I had one box originally, but then AB’s grandmother did something fantastic about seven years ago. She packed up every little bit of her cross stitching stuff and shipped it to me.

Getting that box was like Christmas all over! She had boxes of threads, cute little scissors, many different sizes of needles and pages upon pages of patterns.

She was an avid cross stitcher. The main difference between she and I is that she worked on 22 and 24 count fabric mostly, while I tended towards the standard 14. What this means in lay terms is how many stitches are in an inch. I do the big old squares where I get 14 stitches in a linear inch, or 196 stitches in a square inch. Donna stepped it up a notch and walloped me with between 484 and 576 stitches in a square inch.

She did beautiful work with incredibly fine detail. I remember standing in her house outside Wasilla, Alaska astounded with the detail of her stitching. Someday I told myself.

While Leif played Wii the other day, and AB and Skadi were at a birthday party I went through her bin and pulled out cloth. I was looking for black for my Orange Tree pattern and found a perfectly square, taped off piece of black 22 count. It would be perfect. Almost like she had cut it and taped it specifically with my pattern in mind.

I sat there and contemplated the concept. Could I make those itty bitty, tiny little stitches?

Then well… I chickened out.

I decided to take my first step towards it by buying 18 count fabric instead of 14 this Saturday at Michaels.

Then I realized if I was going to Michaels to buy fabric, I should also have some idea which thread I am going to need. So last night I sat down with the three clear plastic thread holders and started pulling skeins out that correspond to the numbers on the list. I became a little concerned when I started noticing that some of the skeins had way old price tags on them. Fifteen cents a skein? Not to mention “price tags”… who uses those anymore!

Then it dawned on me that it has been seven years since she sent the bin and probably years before that since she has cross stitched. And concern filled my head. What if the colors have changed? What if number 319 is no longer Very Dark Pistachio Green (and for the record *I* have never seen pistachios that dark)?

I have done my best to push concern out of my head and to think about the positive side of not having to buy all new skeins, and doing a somewhat tribute to AB’s grandmother by using her materials for my next pattern.

Oh and yeah, this was the March goal, wasn’t it? And it is only February. Correct-a-mundo. It’s that bug thing. Bug has dug.

Not to mention that I do have the foreknowledge that it may take me a full month to prepare to start on the Orange Tree given the three pages of DMC numbers that need to be obtained, sorted and unrolled and rerolled onto bobbins. I have a need to approach my cross stitching in a very methodical manner. Everything must be just right so that when I sit down and start, I am ready to go.

Also, for the record? The pillowcase dress has not fallen off my radar either… I am looking for the perfect pillow case!

Looking ahead

Awhile back… ok, years ago… Vargasgirl got me into cross stitching. It had always struck me as an old lady type of thing to do. But when I saw the things she was making and the options for patterns out there, I quickly became interested. They weren’t all cutesy scroll country kischey things! There were some really nice contemporary patterns out there.

I started in slow, became hooked and then quickly had more patterns on my hard drive then I knew what to do with.

I started on Chat Noir.

Then I had Leif. And Chat Noir went on the shelf.

I have this great desire to get back to crafting of some type.

Two areas constantly pull at my heart. Sewing and cross stitching.

I want to make my daughter a pillowcase dress before she grows too big and laughs at me for even suggesting she wear a pillowcase.

And have you even seen those summer dress patterns out there? I am way too sure that the fabric for those dresses are even cuter. But I wouldn’t know since I am not allowed in fabric stores. Self imposed ban and all.

I foresee my February goal getting my house to a point where I need to stop for awhile because the next step would entail large sums of money that I am not envisioning having at that point. Additionally I envision March being a busy month with it being our 10th anniversary month and Skadi’s birthday.

I am thinking I am going to take a side trip for the month of March and explore a personal goal…
Start sewing…

Or tackle The Orange Tree…

Crafty Craving

Leif has been asking for a new blankey. He still loves his current one that I made him sometime before his first birthday. Around the house he is blankey attached hauling it everywhere with him.

My little Linus.

He used to occasionally haul it to school with him until the day a year or so ago when I got a note in my box telling me not to allow him to bring it anymore from his former teacher. So now it doesn't leave the house except when we go somewhere to spend the night.

He has been asking for a Star Wars blankey to go with his new Star Wars bedroom in the new house.

I am sure I can find Star Wars fleece at JoAnn's.

I just need to mentally prepare myself for this trip to JoAnn's. Fabric stores are my serious undoing.

I will go straight into the store and walk straight to the fleece. Pick out a Star Wars fabric with a grey fleece for backing and go straight to the cutting counter. Anyone have a pair of those horse blinders that race horses wear? Can I borrow them?

I will not walk by the embroidery floss and look at the fabulous colors and all the neat cross stitching gadgets (I have been aching to cross stitch big time).

I will in no way go look at yarn and knitting needles along with a "How to Knit" book to satisfy my current need to learn to knit cute little hats and scarves and maybe mittens too.

I would never flip open a pattern book to the page of cute little girl summer dress patterns.

And no I don't need any funky buttons for my old Pea coat that I just dug out.

And the last thing I need to think about making is a new quilt.

...

Maybe it is best if I just found Star Wars fleece online and ordered 2 yards??

Glue Sticks!

Glue sticks, glue sticks, glue sticks.

No more bottles of glue.

I am seriously tired of having construction paper sitting around on every flat surface with piles of glue and various thingymabops of all types in it drying. Drying.for.days.

Oh and so far... these works of art are ALL for grandma and Bompa, or so I am told.